


Rose: Play The Rain

by calumTraveler



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Denizen Talk, Gen, Humor, Kid's Universe, Land of Light and Rain, Oneshot, Post Act 7, Pranksters Gambit, Puzzles Ahoy!, Rose Does her Quest!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 17:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6575722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calumTraveler/pseuds/calumTraveler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several Years after creating their new Universe, Rose decides it's well about time to do her quest and PLAY THE RAIN.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rose: Play The Rain

Rose Lalonde was going to do her quest.   
  
Sure, it was years after they'd migrated all of their SBURB Planets into the new universe, and it was even more years since the planet had first been generated for her by SBURB, but finally, today, 4/16/2021, she was finally going to complete the Land of Light and Rain's main quest and she was going to PLAY THE RAIN.  
  
The first thing to do was track down her SPIRIT GUIDE and ask where she even was supposed to begin. That was easy enough- JASPROSESPRITESQUARED could be located curled up alongside the latest batch of MUTANT MEOW BEASTS Roxy had ectobiologized up to help repopulate Earth with new creatures and pets alike.  
  
"Mwrh?" The Sprite Squared gave her such an odd look. "It was one of those buildings you... me... we tore up back before we went grimdark." And then the cat girl sprite went back to licking the dirt and grime out of some young four eyed kitten's fur.  
  
God, Jasprose was weird, but it was a lead none the less.  
  
And so Rose went through LOLAR, searching through the many ruined buildings and islands that she'd torn apart in an attempt to 'wring information out of the game' they'd been told was a lost cause. Most of the ruins had been torn to pieces and left collapsed into piles of rubble, but one particular tower still remained floating in the air, pieces all sort of vaguely orbiting each other, even after all these years.  
  
It was the one with that giant Green Sun Captcha Monolith.  
  
Of course it was.  
  
Rose began searching through the rest of the building that she'd so callously made a floating gravity defying marvel- and soon found a hint as to what she was meant to do. It had been a giant wall mural, depicting a Turtle Consort in Seer of Light robes doing something with a violin, but now was scattered in various directions because of the aforementioned anti-gravity magics. Piecing together that mural was a task in and of itself, mainly because Rose refused to use her Seer Powers to put it back together. She wanted to do this the way it had been intended- with a whole mural in a building that had not been pulled to pieces. Because what kid was meant to hold that much power and intentionally destroy the hints laid out for her spiritual growth as a person?  
  
Finally, after much puzzling over the ruins of the mural (and a whole day's rotation around the sun), Rose had put together the image, and had followed its directions towards a library on LOLAR. What she was looking for, however, would almost be impossible to find, because at some point along the many years journey from their first session to this universe, the Library had been raided for READING MATERIAL, and nobody had bothered returning the books to the place since.  
  
There was even a handy little sign left by a consort, "CLOSED DUE TO NOBODY RETURNING THEIR BOOKS. SHAME ON YOU, YOU HOOLIGANS!"  
  
With a reluctant sigh, Rose began pestering Jade.  
  
It began with "TT: Do you know what happened to the books in the LOLAR Library?" and ended with "TT: What do you mean it was already empty?"  
  
Rose's quest now was very much obvious: Track down the missing books from the Library. They'd likely been scattered all across their Session, and she was sure she was meant to find and return them all as they circled the four Planets so as to figure out just what she needed to proceed.... Now that it was years later, of course that would be almost impossible, and almost certainly would have been during the session itself.  
  
Rose's turned her minds eye towards the missing books, and searched... and searched, and searched some more... Eventually, her mind's eye directed her towards a castle on the Skaian Battlefield which.... for very obvious reasons, was no longer a physical location. It had been the castle she'd dueled with and died against the then Bec Noir, which had first similarly been transformed into floating rubble, and subsequently VAPORIZED by the Battlefield's final transformation.  
  
But hope was not all lost- one special volume, her vision told her, had been stolen by a Dersite Agent and taken from the Battlefield to... To Derse. Specifically the moon that she'd piloted into the Furthest Ring and blown up with the Tumor that had birthed the GREEN SUN.  
  
Rose once more broke out an X2 Combo Facepalm as she lamented to Jade, "My own teenaged actions have done more to keep me from this quest than the years I spent avoiding it."  
  
At this point, Rose had little choice but to skip all the heavy lifting work and just go speak to Cetus directly. She already had the spiel planned out. "Sorry for putting this quest off for so long," she'd begin. "But by the time I pieced together what I was meant to do it was already well too late. Everything I was supposed to find I instead destroyed without even knowing it." She would hear Cetus' remarks on the situation, and then ask what she was supposed to do to complete her quest the way Sburb intended it.  
  
She'd barely gotten to "Sorry" before Cetus had started laughing. And Laughing, and boy howdy could she laugh in that strange, bubbly way that only Cetus could speak. Why hadn't Vriska ever mentioned the Laughing? Was this why she insisted to kill the Denizen first? Was Cetus just an insufferable troll who laughed at her charges upon seeing them? Or was there something different that was inherently funny about this particular meeting?  
  
"I...Is it the irony of my trying to complete my quest so many years later?" Rose couldn't help but voice aloud, even though Cetus continued to laugh. And Laugh. _And Laugh_. _**Whooo Boy**._ Was she still laughing? Yes, Cetus was still laughing.  
  
Vaguely, Rose was starting to understand why Dave had hated Calsprite so much in that Doomed Timeline. This was a lot of laughing.  
  
"I wonder if I should tell Vriska that my Cetus managed to kill herself by laughing non stop?" Rose asked, trying to get the Denizen to do anything other than laugh.  
  
Finally, Cetus did indeed calm down... only to start laughing again, this time with added rolling around on the ocean floor and pounding the sand with her fishy fists.  
  
"Should I inform Echidna that you've gone mad?" Rose asked. "I don't really get what's so funny about this situation. Could you please enlighten me?" She frowned, then X2 facepalmed once more. "Doh. I'm the Seer of Light. What am I missing here?" This, if anything got Cetus to laugh even more. And so Rose delved into her powers and tried to figure it all out...  
  
Skaia knew how their session would play out and so it had Generated LOLAR in exactly the way it did with its quests exactly the way it did, and... And it had generated all of it because it knew that Rose would never ever actually legitimately attempt to do her Quest while they were playing SBURB.  
  
"I... Never was meant to complete my quest?" She asked, and barely got a nod from Cetus in between roars of monstrous laughter. Rose thought on that for a moment, then asked, "My quest was made to be broken?"  
  
Cetus stopped laughing, gave Rose the most serious look ever, and then ever, oh so slowly.... Nodded.  
  
Then, she started laughing again.  
  
Rose just stared. "All this time I was worried that... And I was _never_ meant to Play the Rain? _**WHAT WAS EVEN THE POINT THEN!?"**_ she yelled upwards in general- aiming her question at the now Pond-form Skaia their Universe squatted in, rather then at Cetus, who was still laughing.  
  
\----  
  
Several hours later, the Land of Light and Rain's oceans were teeming with life once more, and Rose emerged from her Denizen's lair seemingly triumphant.  
  
When asked by her friends and family about how her quest went, all Rose would say was that just between her and them, someone had definitely enjoyed the exchange on that Pranksters' Gambit. If she never clarified who had been directly involved, and her friends made their own assumptions about what had happened, well, that was their story to believe.  
  
As for Rose, she made a permanent vow to never tell John just what a massive prankster Skaia had been when generating her quest.


End file.
